Zach Beauchamp's Hatched Job on Richwine

link

Not going to mess with this in depth, but a few quick thoughts, with something more later:

1. The intellectually cowardly part of me wishes this issue would die, since anyone who speaks out on behalf of the un-PC side of this debate gets thought a racist.

2. Which is also part of what keeps me commenting on it, since that's bullshit.

3. I thank the gods that my dissertation was not subjected to the kind of scrutiny that Richwine's has been subjected to. (And my dissertation was regarded as very notably above-average in quality. But if you had shopped it around to a bunch of experts (other than those on my committee) who were extremely hostile to the conclusion, against the backdrop of a discussion of my possible racism and so forth...I'll tell you right now that it would have been shredded.)

4. I don't know anything about Richwine. My own objections in this vicinity concern groupthink, Lysenkoism, and the erroneous belief that liberalism requires an anti-scientific faith in total equality of abilities.

5. The piece is filled with bad reasoning and appeals to empirical evidence that I'm pretty sure are partial and misleading, e.g. the bit about the twins study...but to be sure I'll have to root around a bit. That stuff isn't fresh in my head.

6. The following chilling paragraph sums up the Beauchamp piece pretty well:

It is the case that, on some tests of intelligence, there are demonstrated gaps between different groups of Americans, particularly ones identified as “black” and “white.” As we’ve seen, the evidence overwhelmingly suggests these broad groups have little do with “race” simpliciter and much more to do with the environments people of certain races find themselves in. These findings underscore that careful scholarship on the sources of this gap, like Richard Nisbett’s or Christopher Jencks’, is legitimate academic inquiry and should be vigorously protected as such.

But this field is no place for dilettantes. The costs of being wrong are too high, the fearful forces fueled too powerful for race and IQ research to be judged like normal work. There needs to be a premium on conceptual precision and empirical accuracy over and above standard operating procedure, even (or perhaps especially) at a place as esteemed as Harvard. Anyone who wants to work in this area should be set to a higher standard, asked to explain what “race” means and whether it really what matters when we talk about IQ. It’s a bar Jason Richwine’s simplistic research never would have cleared.

Sometimes, “good enough” isn’t good enough.

Translation:

although we have to be careful to protect the research of people whose conclusions we like, your research needs to be flawless if its conclusion is politically incorrect. The normal standards of scientific inquiry do not apply here. It's ok to talk about IQ if your conclusion is pleasing; if not, you need to explain why we should even be talking about IQ at all. Ditto race. We know what the right conclusion is here, and your argument is sound only if it supports that conclusion. Deviate from the politically palatable conclusion at your peril.

This kind of thing is deplorable.

I'm as unhappy about the possibility that there are racial IQ differences as anyone. But for Chrissake, you can't let your unhappiness about a possibility drive you to this kind of thing.